User experience (UX) design focuses on enhancing user satisfaction by improving how we interact with the websites, applications and devices in our lives. In other words, UX makes complex things easy to use.
While the term “UX” is relatively new, the concept of user-friendly design has been around for generations. “Good design is good business,” the second president of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, famously told Wharton students in 1973. “We are convinced,” he said, “that good design can materially help make a good product reach its full potential.”
Easy Chirp is a third-party web-based twitter interface that provides an accessible alternative to the Twitter.com website. In addition to being more accessible for people with disabilities, Easy Chirp also works with older browsers like IE6, lowband Internet connections, and without JavaScript. Features of Easy Chirp include; visible and accessible links, simple and consistent layout and navigation, a proper heading structure, large default text size and high color contrast, text that re-sizes without breaking, access keys to main menu items, accessible forms and data tables.
Universal Design (UD) is an approach to design that increases the potential for developing a better quality of life for a wide range of individuals. It is a design process that enables and empowers a diverse population by improving human performance, health and wellness, and social participation (Steinfeld and Maisel, 2012). It creates products, systems, and environments to be as usable as possible by as many people as possible regardless of age, ability or situation.
